A wide variety of means exist for communication between users. For example, a user may conduct phone calls via a home phone, work phone, and mobile phone. In addition, users may also communicate using devices such as PC's, PDA's, pagers, etc. using manners of communicating such as email and instant messaging.
Unfortunately, managing such a wide variety of communication means can be difficult. In particular, as a user changes location, communication with the user may vary. For example, while on travel, it may only be possible to reach a user by mobile phone. However, the user may best be reached by email while at work. Also, the user may wish to implement various rules for receiving and controlling communications. For example, to be reached at home, the user may want the home phone to ring three times before forwarding the call to a mobile phone. As another example, the user may wish to be paged each time an email is received from a particular person while away from the office.
A user may also wish to treat a phone call differently dependent on who is calling the user. For example, if a user receives a call from a caller that the user does not want to speak to at the moment, the user may want to send that call directly to voice mail. Also, if a user receives a call from a number that displays no caller ID information or that the user otherwise does not recognize, the user may wish to somehow specially treat the call because the caller is a potential telemarketer.
Further relating to communication between users, a wide variety of means also exist for establishing a conference call between three or more users. For example, one method for establishing a conference call involves having one user call other users (e.g., conference users) and bridging each user onto the conference call. This method requires that the initiating user individually call each conference user.
Another method for establishing a conference call involves using a conference telephone number to which conference users dial in to join the conference call. This method requires that each participant know of the conference call beforehand and requires that a dial-number and access code be assigned to the conference call beforehand.
Yet another method for establishing a conference call involves establishing a predetermined list of conference users and initiating a conference call to the list of participants at the request of an initiating user. The voice network bridges calls to the conference users to establish the conference call.
Problems often arise during conference calls when one or more of the conference users joins the conference call late, needs to take a break from the conference call, or otherwise misses part of the conference call. Namely, a conference user is not aware of what was discussed while the user was absent.